suffrage and rebel disfranchisement," like the distant howl of jackals over a dead lion's carcass.

The moderate wing of the Republican party began to grow rapidly. The adoption of the Fourteenth Amendment by the South, during this year, had mollified their anger, and the utter helplessness of that crushed and exhausted people had quieted their fears. The arbitrary tyranny exercised over the Confederate States by the parliamentary "Rump" at Washington, began to excite alarm among the people of the North who had hitherto followed them, but were now beginning to fear lest their own liberties be invaded; and struggling slowly through the multitudinous cries of continued confusion and desolation, the voice of humanity at last made itself heard, for General Grant did but speak the rising sentiment of a whole people, wearied and disgusted with the endless orgies of Congressional Reconstruction, when he said, in accepting his nomination for President, "Let us have Peace!"

This moderate wing of the Republican party was not a little strengthened against the Radicals, in the winter and spring of 1868, by the unsuccessful attempt of the latter to impeach President Johnson, which soon began to assume the form of persecution. Was there to be no end to the assumption and concentration of power by Congress? Were the Executive and Judicial branches of Government to be obliterated? Was State Government to be wiped out, and all power centered in the Federal Congress, which, by rapid strides, unchecked by Constitutional provisions, was fast assuming and exercising despotic sway? These suggestions were assiduously spread by the Democrats, and were finding lodgment in many Republican minds.

The Congressional leaders still had the confidence of their party to a great extent; but the impression began to prevail that, when such staunch and true Republicans as William P. Fessenden, of Maine, and Lyman Trumbull, of Illinois, could not follow them, 62 these leaders had lost their heads and must be checked. General Grant, accordingly, was put forward, as the representative of the moderate element of his party and the strength of his supporters was shown by his nomination at Chicago on May 21st, 1868, as the Republican candidate for President. This was a defeat for the Radicals, and they recognized it as such. But this was not all.

There was a strong element among the Congressional Radicals which contended that, under the old Constitution, suffrage in all the States could be regulated by act of Congress. On February 24th, 1865, while resisting the recognition of Louisiana's government, Mr. Sumner, in the Senate, insisted that Congress had the right to regulate suffrage in any State, and should exercise that right by the establishment of negro suffrage. 63 On February 27th, 1866, Judge Kelley, of Pennsylvania, in the House, again contended for the same doctrine.64 On December 18th, 1865, a resolution introduced in the House by Mr. Thornton of Illinois, to the effect that Congress did not have the right to control suffrage in the States, was laid on the table by a vote of 111 to fortysix,65 and again, on February 26th, 1866, a similar resolution by Mr. Defrees, of Indiana, was referred to the Judiciary Committee by a vote of eighty-six to thirty, and never reported.66 These and other similar outgivings by Congress of its views on this question (all of which were in connection with negro suffrage), together with its positive acts in establishing such suffrage against the almost unanimous will of the people (as expressed by their votes and local constitutions) in the District of Columbia, in all of the Southern States, in Nebraska and in the territories, were seized upon by the Democrats as evidence of the fixed determination of the Radical party to force negro suffrage upon all the States, nolens volens. The undeniable facts lent so much color to this charge, that it found much credence with the people, and created so great a feeling of alarm, that the dominant party was in great danger of defeat at the ensuing Presidential election.

There can be no doubt, especially in view of subsequent events, that it was then the purpose of the Radical wing of the Republican party, which, at the time, controlled Congress and the State Legislatures, to force negro suffrage upon the country at large, as a means of perpetuating their power; but it seems equally clear that the great majority of the Northern people, comprising all the Democrats, and a large portion of the rank and file of the Republicans, were unalterably opposed to negro suffrage for their own States-although many Republicans were prepared to consider it in a very calm and philanthropic light as applied to the hated South, that political Edom over which the Lord had cast forth his shoe.

It therefore became manifest to the Republican leaders, especially to those of the moderate wing, that in order to succeed in the ensuing presidential campaign, the opposition of the people to negro suffrage for the North must be placated and their alarm lest it be forced upon them must be soothed; at the same time, the action of the Radicals, in having already forced it upon the South, must be reconciled and explained. Many of the Radical leaders, however, were opposed to saying anything on the subject. They were of the same opinion still as to the necessity of negro votes to sustain themselves against the subsiding political tide, which they saw had already set in, and they yielded with sullen and bad grace to the second plank in the platform of their party, adopted in the Republican National Convention at Chicago, on May 21st, 1868,66a which was as follows:

"2. The guaranty by Congress of equal suffrage to all loyal men at the South was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude and of justice and must be maintained; while the question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States."67

This plank, it was thought, would placate everybody in the party. Those who feared negro suffrage for themselves were assured, in the most solemn manner, that it should never be forced upon them, but that "the question of suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of those States." Away, then, with the campaign bugaboo of negro suffrage for the North, which had been raised up by the Democrats, merely to divide and distract the Republican party! Was there not here in this National platform of that party such a distinct and unequivocal declaration - amounting even to a pledge - against it, as should satisfy any reasonable man?

But, for the South-that, of course, was a different question. Gratitude to the negroes for their loyalty and military service; the necessity of furnishing them with some weapon of defence against the Southern white men, who were said to be so much more hostile and cruel to them than the Northerners; a just punishment of the Southern whites for their treason; the securing of those disloyal and seditious States for the Republican partyan essential for the safety and welfare of the country; and finally the discouragement of negro emigration from the South to the North-these were amply sufficient justifications for forcing negro suffrage on the South, to a party in whose councils none appeared who undertook to speak for that section, but the negro himself and his evil genius, the carpet-bagger.

In July, 1868, the Democratic National Convention met at New York, and, while they demanded that the right of suffrage should be left to the respective States, it was manifest that, on this issue, at least, the Republican platform of six weeks previous had taken the wind out of their sails by declaring for the same thing, so far as the North was concerned. And thus the fears of the Northern people on that point were soothed to sleep, and a vote of confidence was given to the Republican party that fall in the triumphant election of General Ulysses S. Grant as President.

The advocates of general negro suffrage, however, had not relaxed their efforts. Iowa was known to be overwhelmingly Republican. The Census of 1870 showed that, of men over twenty-one years of age in Iowa, there were 289,162 whites and 1,542 negroes.68 In 1868 it is reasonably certain that there were less than one thousand negro men of voting age in the entire State, or approximately about one-third of one per cent. of the voting population. Surely negro suffrage could not hurt those people much more than Indian suffrage would now hurt Virginia. Here, then, was the place to make another effort to establish negro suffrage